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From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Longest Movies
Message-ID: <4532@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 27-Mar-85 13:17:05 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.4532
Posted: Wed Mar 27 13:17:05 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Mar-85 00:45:59 EST
References: <151@iwu1b.UUCP> <312@muddcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher)
Distribution: net
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 37
Summary: 

In article <312@muddcs.UUCP> cberry@muddcs.UUCP (Craig Berry) writes:
>In article <151@iwu1b.UUCP> renrut@iwu1b.UUCP (turner) writes:
>
> How about "Greed"?  I don't have all of the data on it handy, but it was
>made around 1915(?).  The movie was based on the novel _McTeague_ by Frank
>Norris, a popular turn-of-the-century author (incidentally, the book is
>quite good and still in print).  As I recall, the original running length
>was on the order of fifteen hours (!).  Since then, some of the film has
>been lost, but a version still exists which runs about nine hours.
> It has been suggested that this movie was bankrolled by the American
>Popcorn Marketing Board :-).

"Greed" came in at around eight hours in Erich von Stroheim's cut.  MGM
took the film away from von Stroheim and editted it down to about two hours.
This is the longest release version that ever was shown.  The original eight
hour version is lost, and is number one on the American Film Institute's
"most wanted list" of films it desperately wants to rediscover.  Prospects
are considered poor.  "Greed" was released in 1923.  (1915 was the year of 
"Birth of a Nation".  Like most histories, film history has a few standout
dates to remember, chiefly 1915 for "Birth of a Nation" and 1927 for "The
Jazz Singer".)

As far as long movies go, "Heimat", a German film made for theaters and
just shown at Filmex, runs some 15 hours.  If you want to disqualify that
film, for some reason, how about the Russian version of "War and Peace" -
1967, a little over eight hours long.  Handy Andy Warhol also made waves
by producing incredibly long, incredibly dull films in the sixties.  I
don't have the running times handy, but one was several hours of a man
sleeping and another showed a skyscraper, from a distance, over the course
of many hours.  The big highlight of the latter was sunset, when the lights
went on.

-- 

        			Peter Reiher
        			reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher